CULINARY HERBS II 



who has ever stuffed a Thanksgiving turkey, a 

 Christmas goose or ducks or chickens with home- 

 grown, home-prepared herbs, either fresh or dried, 

 will ever after be willing to buy the paper packages 

 or tin cans of semi-inodorous, prehistoric dust which 

 masquerades equally well as "fresh" sage, summer 

 savory, thyme or something else, the only apparent 

 difference being the label. 



To learn to value herbs at their true worth one 

 should grow them. Then every visitor to the garden 

 will be reminded of some quotation from the Bible, 

 or Shakespeare or some other repository of interest- 

 ing thoughts ; for since herbs have been loved as 

 long as the race has lived on the earth, literature is 

 full of references to facts and fancies concerning 

 them. Thus the herb garden will become the nu- 

 cleus around which cluster hoary legends, gems of 

 verse and lilts of song, and where one almost stoops 

 to remove his shoes, for 



' ' The wisdom of the ages 

 Blooms anew among the sages." 



CULINARY HERBS DEFINED 



It may be said that sweet or culinary herbs are 

 those annual, biennial or perennial plants whose 

 green parts, tender roots or ripe seeds have an 

 aromatic flavor and fragrance, due either to a vola- 

 tile oil or to other chemically named substances 

 peculiar to the individual species. Since many of them 

 have pleasing odors they have been called sweet, and 

 since they have been long used in cookery to add their 



